Boy Nick ruin a good feeling why don’t ya. Most coaches teach that they would rather have a ground ball out then a strike out because it is a more productive AB. So IF Alex is able to hit a few more grounders and have a few less K’s he will find a few more hits. Over a course of 600AB’s he will only need to find about 25 more hits to be a .300 hitter, or about 5 more hits a month (1 per week). I would take this Alex over the one that was drafted 6 years ago, He hits less pop ups and more hard GB’s and line outs. Sooner or later those will start falling. One more thing Alex batting leadoff may not be concerned about the HR’s but about getting on base and getting in scoring Position.

Now factor in “The Year of the Pitcher”, smaller bats and the declining offensive production throughout the Major Leagues and you could argue that Alex, even just by maintaining previous production levels, is actually improving.

Gordon is never going to be what we had hoped he would be, but at least he is up to being okay while playing a pretty good LF.

I am no scout, but he passes the eye ball test so far. I don’t know who classifies LD rates or any of these stats, but I know when a ball is hit hard.

Anyone who has watched Alex sees him much more apt to take a pitch to left field, something he hasnt done a whole lot. He even has been hitting to the opposite field with power. Still gets fooled a lot with low and away though.

It wasnt mentioned that Gordons stats are by far the best of any AL Left fielder. He is fine.

@Nick,@Kyle,

Since better players tend to have higher BABIP does that mean they are simply luckier? I don’t think that quite makes sense otherwise i don’t think we’d see the spread in career stats that we do, thus there must be differences in hitter skill that account for the difference:
3 possible reasons:
1) Power
Unless i’m mistaken, HRs are not included in the BABIP, so a player upping his HR rate does not reflect in his BABIP, though it probably would improve other batting stats. Doesn’t seem to apply to Gordon
2) Speed
If you’re Michael Bourn or Ichiro Suzuki, you’re gonna beat out more infield hits which would help your BABIP by not getting thrown out on weak ground balls to the infield.
Gordon seems to have decent speed, but not the kind that would make this difference
3) Using the Entire Field
I’d imagine the biggest difference maker would be defensive scouting/positioning. For pure pull hitters, esp. lefty DHs, the infield ‘shift’ is often used when there’s no one on or perhaps a runner on 1st. Given the tendency of the player to pull ground balls, this should lower his BABIP since there are more defenders to that area. Compare this to a player who can spray the ball to all fields: the defense is likely to play straight up meaning the outfielders have longer difference to run, and the up the middle defense is likely to be making more off balance throws, and getting to fewer ground balls.
If this improvement isn’t luck, I’d expect his spray chart to change this year as opposed to previous years, so that teams can’t position their defense as efficiently leading to a higher BABIP.
4) (Kinda goes with #3) better plate coverage.
If a player is able to better cover the plate, i would think that the pitcher can’t pitch into the defense, eg. use pitch location/velocity to induce contact to one side of the diamond or another. In addition, more foul balls increase the odds of the batter getting a pitch that he can hit.

I’m not saying these are the reasons, I’m just saying these hypotheses are not excluded by the stats provided above.

Would a website like fangraphs have this sort of info? I’d be interested to see whether there are any interesting correlations to explain the improved BABIP.

Is it that he’s gotten better? Or that we’ve gotten to see a decent sample size? It appears his stats are the same, that he is the same player as always. I think what changed was our expectations. In 2008 with these stats, everyone was drooling about how good he would still become. There was the anticipation of further development into that ‘savior’ type player that we drafted him to be.

Fast forward to now, after injuries and position changes and all that stuff, everyone came into this season knowing this was his last shot as a Royal. No one expected great things, and we’re all pretty happy with his average/above average stats.

Also feeding the illusion would be his great start to the season. He looked like an all-star then and has since come to earth. But because of how well he started, I think the general perception is to think that he did in fact turn the corner and become a fairly complete hitter. I hope that he continues to improve and can be a part of the future of this team. Guess we’ll see if that ends up happening.

When a ball is put in play, it has two aspects that affect results – location and speed. The location would seem to be less controllable of the two – meaning every batter probably experiences the same random distribution of placement.
What a player has control over is the speed of the batted ball – variation comes from batter strength, bat speed and ability to center the bat on the ball.
From interviews with Gordon and Seitzer, I’m guessing Gordon’s improvement probably was related to better bat speed and squaring up better.

“You’re suggesting he’s hitting more line-drives (aka faster hit balls), but that doesn’t seem to be the case.”

Like Butler, who has similar LD%, Alex may just be hitting his grounders and flies harder, yielding similar results, although with more doubles, triples, and homers. Gordon’s swing is flatter than it was.

Looking at the numbers, his increased BABIP can, in part, be explained by his increased ground-ball rate. In 2008, his best prior offensive season, his GB/FB ration was .66. Currently, it is .93. Groundballs have a higher BABIP then flyballs. By hitting more balls on the ground, he is increases his chances of a hit. The downside of increasing groundballs is that a players power often decreases. Gordon, appears (at least so far) to be bucking the trend. His ISO in 2008 was .172 and it is now .179. While the increased BABIP and the high ISO are probably inflated due to luck, they are also higher because of a different and much more effective approach at the plate. He is making more contact and striking out less while maintaining his power and OBA.

If everyday we talked about the starting rotation not being good, this site would be really boring.